AMANDA Dales and Martha Owen are making their York Settlement Community Players debuts in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the York Theatre Royal Studio from February 28.

Adapted from the 1898 Russian text by London playwright Michael Frayn, the play opens with an elderly professor and his beautiful young second wife returning to their country estate from the city, setting chaos in motion. Uncle Vanya, the brother of the professor's first wife, is thrown into an emotional maelstrom in Chekhov's poignant comedy of love, loss and desire.

Amanda, who will play the professor's fascinating second wife, Yelena, is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. "I came over to England in 2010 to study for a degree in performing at LAMDA in London," she says. "In 2013 I met a Yorkshireman from Scarborough, Sam Taylor, at LAMDA, and we're now married. We lived in London until 2016 but we've loved moving to York; it's been a fabulous move."

Amanda works in child care, working with nurseries in York. "I haven't done any acting for a good five years, but I felt I'd settled into York and had time on my hands to take on something new, so I emailed Helen [director Helen Wilson] about the auditions.

"I just thought, I might as well give it a go. It'd been ages since I'd auditioned for anything; it'd be a fun afternoon, if nothing else!" Lo and behold, Helen picked her to play Yelena. "I did some Chekhov at LAMDA, we did scenes from Three Sisters, but this is my first time of doing a full Chekhov play, so I was really excited. It's been wonderful working with Helen, whose enthusiasm for Chekhov is boundless."

Analysing Yelena, Amanda says: "She's interesting because her motivations are some of the more ambiguous and mysterious of Chekhov's women. At times it feels like she's in a different play, but one of the things I like about her is she feels modern.

"She has that modern vibe to her, and because she's mysterious, it meant that I needed to do more 'internal' work on her than was on the page because there's a lot happening 'off stage' in her mind. So I had to make some decisions about what I thought she was motivated by...though I've kept that back from the others."   

Martha, from Twickenham, is in the third year of her English Literature studies at the University of York, at present working on her dissertation on contemporary American novels, in particular the works of Jennifer Egan.

Last year, Settlement chairman Maurice Crichton, who will play Uncle Vanya, saw Martha perform an innovative new version of Chekhov's Three Sisters with two friends, Katie Smith and Kate Lansdale, at the Angel On The Green, in Bishopthorpe Road, in which they played all the characters.

Martha also has starred as Madame Ranevsky, the lead, in another Chekhov work, The Cherry Orchard, for the university's Drama Society.

Through Facebook, she learnt of the Settlement production of Uncle Vanya, a third Chekhov opportunity. "I knew there was only one part I could really audition for, [the gentle, homely, steadfast] Sonya, though I also knew there were a lot of talented women in York who'd want to play her," says Martha.

"When Helen told me I'd got it, I said 'Are you sure?', which is a classic Sonya comment! Sonya is very endearing and very naive and it's just a marvellous mix to play, as she has that universal gaucheness of a teenage girl that we all recognise in ourselves.

"She's a slightly weird presence on stage; she's a strange one, as she's awkward and clueless about what's going on."

Martha says the language Sonya uses gives her everything she needs to create her character. "She has this fervent faith; she's almost fanatic," she suggests. "One of the things I'm trying not to do is to smooth out the emotions, which is a very British mistake to make with a Chekhov text and not very Russian.

"In Russian culture, impulsive behaviour is something that is enjoyed and celebrated, as opposed to a cause of embarrassment.

"It makes more sense if emotions are up in the air and louder in our performance as hopefully that takes the audience to an edgier place than they would normally be in."   

York Settlement Community Players present Uncle Vanya, York Theatre Royal Studio, February 28 to March 10, 7.45pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk 

Did you know?

Amanda Dales is 29 years old, Martha Owen, 22: the exact ages of Yelena and Sonya, the characters they play in Uncle Vanya.